A parent loves their baby from the moment they are born- we have no idea at what point the baby loves the parent back. It's still love.

Not true for me. I did not love my child the moment they were born, but I did love my child the moment they were born. I guess it depends on how love is defined. if it about a feeling then I did not love my child until a few months went by. If it is about doing something for the other person that is in their best interest, then I did love my baby by feeding him, touching him (cause I heard that was a good thing to do for brain development), and taking care of his needs.

Romantic love is (among other things) communicating on some insanely intimate level and trusting your innermost feelings and insecurities and fantasies and pretty much EVERYTHING with another person. I just don't see how that's possible when only one of you is attempting to communicate/share on that level.

Erm, because someone might actually stab her if she does I swear, the other one made my ears bleed.

Sure, it can be love if it's unrequited, but it's a fanciful notion. Fine if the bearer understands that, but can become dangerous if not.

Hell, I'm just the teensiest bit in love with my trainer - he's better looking than anyone deserves to be, but really lovely and unassuming with it...and he's slowly but surely helping turn me into a goddess so what's not to love. Fanciful? Yep, of course...completely...he's also 15 years younger than me and wayyyy out of my league, but hey, it brightens up my sad day

Romantic stories have to have a few key ingredients. The biggest ingredient is that the lovers must be kept apart. The most romantic stories have one or both lovers die (think Romeo and Juliet, Titanic, etc). If a romantic story has the lovers unite, it only happens at the end and then the story ends (think happily ever after--would you really want to see that part of the story?). Romance is not the same as love. I agree, unrequited love is longing. And when pathological, it is obsession.

I never even thought that it might not be, having been reared on the romanticism of the 17th to 19th century. I viewe love as universal. Back when I was a teen I was very fond of the Greek classification of love, pragma, lutus, etc....

I think it is love, but it's the simplest, naivest and least meaningful kind of love.

It doesn't really have to be from afar either; you can know someone quite well and be in love with them without them feeling the same for you.

I think it's a shallow sort of love born out of loneliness and, as others have said, longing for connection and intimacy. Deep love has to be reciprocal and based on communication and connection between people. It's still an intense feeling though, one I've felt a few times and honestly not something I care to go through ever again. Its pretty awful, honestly.

Today I will: Eat food, not poison. Plan for success, not settle for failure. Live my real life, not a virtual one. Move and grow, not sit and die.